The Buchla analog music synthesiser is an instrument that really fascinates me. The whole philosophy behind the thing seems to be quite radically different from Moog & ARP, perhaps somewhat akin to EMS in some ways, I don't know.
Getting information about these instruments is difficult - Buchla's own website has a list of modules, with some descriptions, but the images were poor for the most part. Also, many of the modules, including some of the lesser-known ones did not have images at all.
This fellow who repairs/restores and sells/trades Vintage Buchla instruments just set up a website featuring images and descriptions of, (I think) every 200-series module, apart from the new 200e series pieces. It's obviously a labour of love. there are detailed colour images of nearly every 200 series module.
This is obviously for the analogue synth nuts here:
http://www.electricmusicbox.com/
This is the synthesiser that was used by Morton Subotnick on his classic electronic music albums, EG "A Sky of Cloudless Sulfur".
― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 5 November 2005 15:26 (nineteen years ago)
I think it's worth noting that initially, the philosophy wasn't much different from Moog or Arp. I mean, it's a classic story, Moog deciding to wed the piano keyboard to the synth while Buchla avoided it, but I think in the early days of these "cheaper" electronic music instruments, Moogs and Arps(and EMS, and whomever else) were just as often used without regard to the keyboard. I mean, when you're faced with a huge Moog modular system, just because there's a keyboard there doesn't make you need to use it, especially when it takes an hour to learn how to patch it in so the keyboard even does anything!
I'd say another radical thing about the buchla worth mentioning is, if I remember correctly, it used stackable banana plugs instead of 1/4" plugs(or a matrix). This allowed you to do way crazier stuff with voltages that I didn't quite get in the short time I had to play with it. Basically you could plug more then one thing into a jack, or vice versa. The Arp 2600 has a section called "multiple" which allows the splitting/sharing of signals and I imagine the bigger Moogs could do the same.
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Sunday, 6 November 2005 16:56 (nineteen years ago)